


The IMF isn't SHIELD

by Mycroffed



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton is William Brandt, Follows the movie closely, I needed to do it, M/M, surprise surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 03:52:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4691021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mycroffed/pseuds/Mycroffed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton is William Brandt. And he was there in Russia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The IMF isn't SHIELD

**Author's Note:**

> I just love the idea that Clint is forced to go undercover but that he comes out compromised and with some new friends. So enjoy!  
> Thank you for reading, kudo'ing and commenting! (They really, really make my day)

Clint hated going undercover.

That was a fact that everybody around him knew. Natasha knew, Coulson knew, even Fury knew. He got too attached to the people he met while undercover. He had proven it multiple times before, he was easily compromised and then he'd change the plan, until it included the safety of the people he started to care about.

And yet he was still sent undercover. Clint had no idea why Fury - and Coulson to a certain extent, his own bloody husband - kept sending him undercover.

One other reason he hated going undercover was that he couldn't make contact with the home front. He couldn't make contact with his husband, he couldn't make contact with his best friend and definitely not with the director of the organization he worked for.

This time, they sent him undercover in IMF, another organization to fight the bad guys in the world. Just not the bad guys with special powers, above the human ability. They had sent him in as their chief analyst. He didn't need to go in the field - even though Natasha had been training him for hand to hand combat just in case he did - which was a relief for him. He didn't know how to hide his typical fighting style or how to make up for the loss of his bow. Granted, he could work a gun and he could turn anything into a weapon, but he was his best with a bow and arrows.

Natasha and Phil followed him pretty closely - they were generally in the same country as he was, so that Clint could contact them and tell them what he had found out. Every couple of weeks, he took a day off and disappeared completely so that he could meet up with his friends. They got in some sort of pattern - if he had been meeting people like Ethan Hunt earlier in his career in IMF, they would've found out about that pattern earlier than they had - in the early morning they'd have breakfast together and Clint would tell them everything his alter ego William Brandt had found out. After the briefing, Clint and Phil would share a lunch and after that, they'd go to some tiny hotel room where they could talk and do whatever they wanted. Clint needed that day more than he ever needed anything.

The pattern went on like that. Clint managed not to get compromised, he managed to stay sane as well - not like that one time when they had him defusing bombs in Afghanistan - since he had regular contact with the two people he loved, albeit in completely different ways.

The pattern was only broken when he went to Russia.

 

*

 

William Brandt was doing good in the IMF. His life was calm for once - relatively speaking - as he did his work alongside the Secretary. They were sent to the country to accept an order of Friendship, to bring the two countries closer together again - the communications between the two countries were still a bit _difficult_ , even though the Cold War was officially over.

He liked what he was doing, he was bringing peace for once, instead of bringing war or killing people to preserve the peace, and only for that reason, he knew that this undercover mission was different from the others he was sent on before. But then the Kremlin was blown up and the two of them - both him and the Secretary - needed to get out of the country as fast as they possibly could. But first they needed to pick up an agent.

The dark haired man got into the car and greeted the Secretary before asking why he was in Russia.

"I'm not." Was the dry reply. "Not since a bomb blew up the Kremlin." Then there was some more bullshit about what they were really doing there, but for that, William zoned out - or at least he didn't pay attention as closely as before. He didn't need to hear things he already knew twice. Plus, his gut feeling was telling him that he wouldn't get to see Coulson and Natasha for a long, long time. _Great_.

He took the agent in closely. It was fairly obvious that he and the Secretary had worked together often, that this man was one of the most trusted agents in the organization. He looked like he had been in hell the last couple of days: he was wearing stolen clothes - Clint had lived on the street long enough to know what those type of clothes looked like - over a hospital outfit. He also had dirt on his face and wounds that were healing, but hadn't disappeared entirely - also something Clint was familiar with.

The agent noticed how William had been taking him in and looked back, probably doing the same to him. The Secretary nodded towards him and said: "My chief analyst, William Brandt."

William held out his hand towards the man, trying to be polite, but the agent started to search his pockets. Brandt blinked a few times, a bit confused until the agent asked for a pen and once he had given him one started drawing on his hand. He described a man that had been on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar as well, someone he was looking for himself. Cobalt.

There was some more talking between the Secretary and the agent called Ethan Hunt - he now recognized him, after the man next to him had called him by his name. Ghost Protocol was announced, Ethan Hunt informed that his chances of getting Cobalt were better if he ran and went into hiding than if he went back to Washington, like the Secretary was supposed to. The Secretary basically gave the man a new mission.

The Secretary was in the middle of a sentence when the car was shaken - the car was being shot at - _they_ were being shot at. Even though Clint knew perfectly well what to do in these kinds of situations - he had been a field agent for long enough - Hunt didn't know that and the agent started shouting orders. "Stay down!"

Clint could see the mix of confusion and disbelief when the Secretary was shot - and briefly after the driver, which ended in the car falling into the water.

Clint didn't need to stay in character as he was gasping for breath in that car, when Hunt asked him if he was okay. Even Clint would simply have nodded, looking around for some way out. That was one thing he and William Brandt shared. He didn't protest when Hunt took control of the situation and ordered him around - he was used to superiors doing that, after all. The dove under the car, but soon needed to change plans when they were being shot at.

For a second, Clint thought that they were going to die there, underwater, shot by a stray bullet of one of the Russian agents who were simply shooting at anything that moved around the car and in the water. But Hunt was good, he was real good. He pulled a flare out of the car and then the body of the dead driver. He lighted the flare, sent it along the river. The shots were now focussed on the floating form - which was pretty stupid if you considered it - and the two of them could reach the surface without much trouble.

As soon as they were out of the water, William Brandt came back out, instead of Clint acting on instinct. William was scared - well, a little bit - but as soon as he started running with Hunt alongside a train, trying to get in, the adrenaline took over and he forgot about being scared. Until they were met by guns.

He tried not to tense up, but the people behind the guns - Benji Dunn and Jane Carter - were Hunt's team mates, he soon discovered. Two words from the agent were enough to let them lower the guns again.

William was grateful for the warm - and dry - clothes that Benji gave him while Hunt looked at the files on the drive that the Secretary had given him. For a moment, he didn't know what to do - William was never supposed to be in the field, he was a paper pusher. He tried to look comfortable, to look nonchalant as he was also trying to figure out what to do, so he leaned against the wall of the train wagon. Turned out to be a bad idea - a bit of Clint seeping through perhaps? - as he accidentally pressed a button that made guns appear. Everybody looked at him for a moment, but he pretended like nothing had happened, like so many times before.

Hunt gave them the background of the mission - he once mentioned Budapest and a dead agent and Clint had to do his best not to roll his eyes. Nothing good ever happened in Budapest, he had more than enough experience with that city. The motivational speech that Hunt then launched made him hesitate for a second if he wanted in, but the look he got from the agent made him stop. He was needed and even though he wasn't asked, he wasn't pushed away either and he was going to do everything he possibly could to help them.

They formed a plan - Clint had learned to appreciate plans, a side effect of working with Coulson for too long - and soon they were packing everything they needed. William spotted the Hammer Tech gloves and he had to stop himself from snatching them and calling Stark so that he could replace them. Nothing good ever came from using Hammer Tech. Once packed, they went on their way, this time to a place where Clint had never been before, to Dubai.

 

*

 

The details of the plan were set - it was mainly Brandt asking annoying questions while the rest replied - and he learned that he was going to be the 'helper'. He could do so much more than being a helper, but he couldn't blow his cover, not yet. They were supposed to give the tallest building in the world a makeover first.

Things went _mostly_ as planned - they had to reach the server room from the outside, the Hammer Tech gloves malfunctioned, as Clint could have predicted, William and Jane saved Hunt's life and William had to wear a lens that blocked his vision out of one eye. It made Clint a bit uncomfortable, but he couldn't destroy his cover, he couldn't he couldn't he couldn't. And he knew it.

Eventually things turned out the way they had wanted them to turn out - the nuclear codes were obtained by the right people, the diamonds were given to the assassin - she didn't remind him of Natasha, no, not at all - and they all fought the bad guys. Natasha's training finally came in hand. He had taken a man down but Ethan had been watching him and that was the first crack in his cover. Shit.

But then Ethan was gone and William was alone in a safe house with Jane and Benji. He needed to process what had happened that day, what exactly went wrong, which parts of the plan had failed. He knew that the assassin was dead and he - the dick that he was - accused Jane of killing her on purpose. He managed to startle Benji when he slammed his hand on the table and shouted that "she was not the mission." He couldn't hold back his anger all of a sudden - it was a combination of the mission not going the way they had wanted it to go and the lack of Coulson there to calm him down.

He was mainly focussed on Jane because that was simpler - after all, she had killed one of the assets they were supposed to let go - and he knew it wasn't fair of him, but he was just so angry.

The anger apparently was contagious because then Jane was accusing Benji of not hiding them well enough, so that the Russians could find them and screw up the mission even more. William was telling - depending on your definition of telling - Benji that he wasn't just a technician anymore, that he was a field agent when Ethan came out.

"And you're just an analyst." The man said - almost shouted, there was just a lot of disappointment and anger in the air. "Right?" Hunt walked closer to where he was sitting on the table and William suddenly let go of the anger now that it was him who was attacked. " _Right_?"

It wasn't until Hunt was right in front of him and William was standing up to look him in the eye that the dreaded question of every undercover agent came. "Who are you really, Brandt?"

He pretended to play dumb, his brow furrowed in a frown. "What are you asking?"

"What am I asking?" Ethan huffed, turning away from the undercover agent. "Let me see if I can put it in another way." And then suddenly there was a gun in his face. It was Clint who was reacting to that, not William. He grabbed Ethan's wrist, put the gun behind his belt, where Hunt grabbed it again, but in the end, it was Clint who was standing there with the gun pointed at Hunt rather than the other way around.

"How does an agent with skills like that end up an analyst?" Hunt asked, not even tensing up because of the gun, but Clint was still pointing it, even though Jane was now pointing a gun at him. He was confident enough in his skills that if he needed to, he'd be able to make it out alive. He'd been in worse situations. But he didn't need to get out of this by using violence, so he relaxed and put the gun back down.

He looked down, visibly uneasy when he said that "We all have our secrets." He knew nobody was going to be happy with that explanation, but it was all they were getting for now. "Don't we?" He handed the gun back to Hunt, desperately hoping that it would be enough for now.

"You tell me yours I tell you mine." So it wasn't. He took a deep breath and turned his back to Ethan. He was about to explain when the IMF agent got a text. He told them to sit tight, that he was going to send someone to get them out and that he was changing the plan. After those words, he was gone, leaving confused agents behind.

Clint would've preferred if everybody would have left him alone, but of course, once Ethan was gone, their focus was trained on him once again.

"Would you care to explain yourself, William Brandt?" Jane asked, the look on her face telling him not to mess around. He had no choice but to tell them the truth. In any other situation, he would've called Coulson, would've asked him if it was okay for him to do this, but there was no time now, he needed to act on instincts. And those instincts were telling him that if he wanted to earn the trust of these people, he needed to tell them the truth. Or at least a version of the truth.

He let out a deep sigh before he started explaining. "I assume you have both heard of Shield?" He started as he got out a bottle of scotch out of the cupboard and poured himself a glass.

Jane looked confused, but Benji nodded vigorously. "But they're nothing more than rumours, just a ghost organization that doesn't exist." The man exclaimed.

"Not quite." Clint grimaced. "I was on a mission for Shield in Croatia, I was supposed to protect people. The mission went terribly wrong, the couple I was supposed to be shadowing... Well, let's just say that only one of them made it out alive." He didn't look at either of them. "And it was my fault."

"Wait, wait, back up a moment. You're with Shield?" Benji asked, still not quite convinced that the organization actually existed.

"I _was_ with Shield. They dropped me after that last mission gone wrong and made it quite clear that they didn't want me to come back. Ever." He leaned against the stairs, his hands in his trousers as he threw sideway glances at the others. "So I changed my name and applied for a job at IMF as analyst rather than an active field agent. I was done with that for a while."

"So what was your name then?" Jane asked, quietly, as if she had a whole newfound respect for him. "Back when you were with Shield?"

"Clint Barton." He said, the corner of his lip only twitching slightly. "And before that, I was Hawkeye."

Now that was a name that Benji recognized. "Hawkeye? As in the Amazing Hawkeye? The one assassin for hire that still shoots with a bow and who has disappeared -"

"Ten years ago, when I joined Shield." Clint nodded as he completed the man's thought. "Yeah, that one."

"I read the files on that case. You were good at your job, William - I mean Clint. You killed a lot of men, never missed a single shot." Of course Benji would have read his file, of all the people he could possibly team up with, he had to end up with someone who knew his assassins from a decade ago.

"You can keep calling me William, if that makes you more comfortable. I've been here for quite a while now, I'm used to the name." He wasn't, but that didn't matter, not right now. "And how good I was at killing people doesn't really matter now, not anymore."

He walked over to the table and sat down. "I wanted to tell you guys earlier. I was wondering on the plane over to Dubai, do I tell them? What do I tell them? I wasn't meant to be in the field again, I just... I couldn't deal with life and death situations anymore, not after that one failed mission."

He picked up his glass, finished it and got back on his feet, walking to the one bed in the safe house, lowering himself onto it, signalling to the other two that he didn't want to talk about it anymore. He just wished that Coulson, no, that Phil was there for him now. He could really do with some husband snuggling and kissing.

 

*

 

Next thing he knew, Clint was on his way to some airport, where they met up with Ethan again. The IMF didn't know what Clint had told him, but Clint was pretty sure that he knew that something had changed between the three of them, that there was now a trust that hadn't been there before. Clint tried to apologize - "Ethan, look..." - but the man shot him down before he could even begin a sentence. They had a new chance to stop Hendricks and they were going to take it.

"So where are we going?" He said, as a reply to the question if he was still with them.

A wide grin spread over Ethan's face as he said: "India."

 

*

 

It soon became clear to Clint that the man who owned the tactical satellite was basically an Indian Tony Stark. Even the picture matched up. Clint needed to show this to the billionaire - or at least to someone who knew Tony Stark. They could probably have a great laugh about that.

But his good mood was tempered immediately when he learned what his part would be in the next plan. He was supposed to jump down into a giant computer where Benji would catch him with magnets and then guide him in something that was basically a giant over. He wasn't looking forward to it.

He entered the party with another car than Ethan and Jane - who were carrying the code names Jupiter and Venus, which he thought was surprisingly appropriate. He himself was Saturn, while Benji was Pluto, much to his chagrin. After a brief com check, Clint made it to his own place, to the top of the computer he was supposed to jump down into. And it was on his way there, of course, that his com was hacked by Shield - or, you know, Natasha and Phil - who wanted to know how he was.

"Tasha, this really isn't the moment." He mumbled, quietly, hoping that the others couldn't hear him. When he didn't get any confused reactions asking who the heck Tasha was, he assumed that he was clear.

"We haven't heard from you in over three weeks, Clint, we were getting worried." The voice of the red head sounded in his voice, like a reassuring and welcome presence.

"We as in you and Shield?" Clint could only hope as to who the other person in the _we_ Natasha had used was.

"We as in Nat and me." The archer almost teared up when he heard his husband's voice in his ear, even more familiar than Natasha's.

"I'm fine. They were onto me, so I carried out plan B." Clint explained. Before Phil could ask what the hell plan B was, he continued. "I told them that I used to be Shield, but that a failed mission made them drop me and that I then changed my name and applied at IMF. They bought it like it was candy."

"Well done, agent Barton." Phil said, but there was a smile in his voice.

Clint smiled back - a real, relaxed smile - as he told them that he really didn't have time to chat, that he needed to get on with the mission and before either of them could protest, he turned off his com unit before turning it back on, only to hear Benji complaining about the fact that he was Pluto instead of a real planet.

After a relaxed sigh, he teased the former technician that Uranus was still free and after that, the two of them engaged in some friendly banter until everybody started telling him to jump. So he did.

When Ethan a few seconds later asked if he had jumped, he couldn't help but shout rather angrily. "Should I not have jumped? Because I did! I jumped!"

His time in the hot computer wasn't appreciated - no, it was worse than that, it was detested. And hot. Way too hot. He also bumped his head a few times - thanks Benji - but he completed his part of the mission. All there was left for him was bake in there until he got the codes.

Did he mention it was hot in there?

And then the vent started to work again and things went wrong fast. He got the codes, eventually, but he was too late. He called for Benji to back him up, but then the magnet driving thing or whatever was stuck and then he was floating on the air of the fan - "Benji, I need more fan. More fan!" - and then he was out of there, laying on the floor, not in the mood to move anytime soon. But he pushed himself back on his feet as he mumbled something. "Next time, I get to seduce the rich guy."

He hurried over to Hendricks' location along with the rest of the team, but they reached it after the missile was in the air. They were going to try and abort the missile head now, because what else could they do? It was either than or the world at war. Clint had just enough time while he was driving to think that missions with Shield never went this crazy.

Inside, they face a new group of problems. They couldn't enter the abortion codes, the power was down and Jane was hit. So while Benji took care of the relay system, he went looking for a way to turn the power back on.

In the end, he managed to do that, just in time for Ethan to press a button and abort that attack on world peace. Yeah, definitely worse than Shield.

 

*

 

The three of them - Jane, Benji and him - met up with Ethan again after he had returned from the hospital in some small cafe in Seattle. Ethan offered all of them a permanent job as a part of his team and while Jane and Benji accepted it without much convincing, he wasn't too sure. He had a place to return to. He would love to join this team - see, he did get attached to people, especially when he became friends with them - but he already had a team. And that team might be a mess, but it was _his_ mess.

So when Ethan offered them the missions and the other two were gone, he pushed himself up without picking up the phone.

"Brandt." Ethan said, stopping him only temporarily.

"I'm not picking up that phone, Ethan." Clint said softly. "Because I don't think you want me in the field. At least not the field you get to play on."

The IMF agent looked up at him, confused. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Shield has offered to take me back." He explained, scratching the back of his neck rather nervously. "They said they needed me after all, that they-"

"That they need the crazy guy with a bow?" Ethan's lips curved into a smile. "I've known since Dubai, I pulled your file."

Clint sat back down in the chair, a smile on his own lips now. "Then you understand why I have to go back? I mean, I'll try to come out and play with you guys from time to time, when you really need me, but... If I go back - _when_ I go back - my primary loyalty will be to Shield, not to IMF."

"I think I can live with that." Ethan nodded.

Clint relaxed completely, sent the IMF agent a shit eating grin and then looked up again. "It wasn't like you had a lot of choice." He said, the happiness obvious in his voice. "I know two people who would've kicked your ass if you hadn't let me go."

Ethan turned around, only to spot a read headed woman in tights and a balding man in a suit walking towards them. "You know them?" He turned back to Clint, but he didn't get a reply - at least not with words - when the man in the suit hurried over and pulled Clint into a deep kiss. There was no protest whatsoever from the archer. Instead, he cupped the man's neck and pulled him closer. After a good minute they moved away from each other again and Clint turned back to Ethan.

"Meet Phil Coulson. Phil, this is Ethan Hunt." Clint introduced the two man before pointing at the red head. "And _that_ is Natasha Romanoff. These two are part of the team I really belong to." He smiled fondly at his two friends. "And incidentally also my husband and my best friend."

Ethan got up and shook both their hands. "Nice to meet you." They exchanged some more custom greetings before Clint caught Ethan's attention again.

"So we're good?" He asked, holding out his hand for the agent to shake.

"We're good." Ethan replied, taking the hand. He continued to smile as he watched Clint grab the phone, put it in his pocket and walk away, holding hands with his husband and locking arms with his best friend. Clint knew that they were going to see each other again, one way or another. And he was looking forward to it.


End file.
